Touch (23 page)

Paris.

Monsieur Petrain, lawyer by day, tight-arsed Adonis by night. The moment I saw him from across the street, I knew he was Janus’ type. Beneath his cotton shirt was a body that gleamed with taut energy ready to go. His arms were almost too buffed to fit in his sleeves, his jaw was square, his eyes were weak, and he seemed every bit the manifestation of clichéd vanity that I recalled from my dealings with Janus.

Nor was he alone.

Ghosts like company, and when newly inhabiting a body find it easy to buy the companionship that others earn.

Today Janus was buying company with Côtes-du-Rhône, served by a tight-lipped waiter to a table of four. The party sat at the back of a bistro whose speciality was duck and lychee cassoulet served on a bed of chard soaked in hand-picked Sicilian plums. The price was so high they didn’t have the decency to put it on the menu, and if you had to ask, you probably couldn’t pay.

As the sun set over Paris I sat in a dignified woman with antique pince-nez on the end of my nose, a smartphone in my bag and small alp of diamond on my fingers, ate mussels served in lemon cream with garlic mushrooms, and watched Janus hold court, a beautiful wealthy man who wasn’t shy about being the centre of attention.

I was not the only one who watched.

While Paris is a hub of modern fashion, a hazmat suit would stand out. The Aquarius agents therefore dressed more suitably for the environment: long-sleeved shirts, trousers, gloves, high polo collars, hats pulled tight and low and, just peeping out here or there, full-body Lycra suits. The overall result, besides giving the impression of Inuit prepped for a harsh winter, was to leave an area of exposed skin no greater than the distance from the bottom of their furrowed eyebrows to the top of their snuggled-up chins. In winter they could just about pull off the look. How they hunted in summer I could not speculate.

Two of their number, perhaps bolder than their colleagues, were sitting in the window of the restaurant. They ate a starter (hopefully on expenses) of warm goats’ cheese, roast nuts and butter-soaked prawns, only a hint of Lycra suits and shoulder holsters showing beneath their long-sleeved shirts.

To all of which Janus was, naturally, oblivious.

Why look for that which you do not suspect?

A roar of laughter from Janus’ table declared that a particularly witty anecdote had just been delivered, along with an especially droll bottle of red burgundy, whose sweet bite and extreme price tag served only to enhance wit, ease appreciation. I slipped twenty euros on to the table, gathered my walking stick and handbag, and waddled out of the restaurant. Some time in its recent past this body had undergone an operation on its right hip, and now the weight of my spine created a constant sine curve of irritation and discomfort.

Outside the restaurant I took note of the blue van parked – illegally – on the other side of the street, clocked the man with the long sleeves and tight-fitting hat having his third cigarette of the twilight as he leaned against a lamp post, and finally noted the two men nestled against the high stone balustrade of a rooftop, their arms wrapped up tight against the cold, their shapes visible as two patches of blackness against the settling evening light.

I hobbled a few hundred yards before stumbling and catching the arm of the passing businessman with the briefcase into whom I jumped, turning at once to catch the respectable lady by my side before she could fall and murmuring, “Are you all right, Madame?”

Chivalry isn’t dead.

In a rather more comfortable frame I circled the block twice, passing by the restaurant both times to check on Janus’ entrenched circumstance, before I found who I was looking for. The traffic warden was in her early thirties, looked like she might have come from Cambodia or Laos, and her scowl was embedded in the curled downward corners of her lips.

I am Doris Tu, traffic enforcement officer.

I have an an iffy right shoulder and am in urgent need of glasses, but the odds of finding another traffic warden any time soon seemed remote, even on Parisian streets, so I stuck with what I could get.

Squinting against my own questionable eyesight, I half-fumbled my way back to the restaurant where Janus was on to the crème brûlée, one hand up the skirt of his nearest companion.

I crossed to the blue van opposite, its windows tinted, its lights off, and rapped on the glass.

A moment in which I fancied I heard half-mumbled exclamations of obscenity. The window wound down. A face peered at me from the shadows, hair ruffled from having just pulled off the balaclava that otherwise would have completely covered his features. Long-fingered gloves, the sleeves tucked in, trousers tucked into socks, and the gun left, for lack of a better choice, in his jacket pocket, he was Aquarius through and through. Whatever his martial prowess, his parking skills left a lot to be desired.

“You can’t park here,” I snapped in my sharpest, fastest French. “No stopping Monday to Friday 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.!”

“We’re on a delivery,” he mumbled as the floor creaked in the cabin behind him and the assembled assassins tried not to breathe.

“No stopping!” I snapped. “I’m going to have to give you a ticket. Licence, please!”

His mouth dropped.

I am Doris Tu, a woman determined to do her job.

I tried not to laugh.

“Driving licence!” I repeated, snapping my fingers beneath his nose.

And at the end of the day what is a covert agent to do?

Shoot the traffic warden?

He handed over his driving licence.

I pulled out a biro from my pocket and wrote the entirely fraudulent details down in Doris Tu’s notebook, angling the docket away from the van so he couldn’t see the glaring difference between my handwriting and the writing already in the book. “Hundred and twenty euros,” I barked, passing him the ticket through the open window. “Eighty if you pay within fourteen days.”

“Can I just pay now?”

I am bureaucracy on the move, serving the good people of Paris.

“No! And you have to move!”

“But you’ve already given me the ticket.”

“Move!” I nearly shrieked the word. “Or I’ll call the police!”

I am traffic warden. Fear my wrath.

He moved.

As the van pulled away from the kerb I walked away at a stately leg-swinging swagger.

Around the corner I darted into the nearest open shop, caught the arm of the first person I passed,

was irritated to discover that I had acne, a particularly hot spot burning above my left eyebrow, but so be it, no time to fuss,

and headed back the way I’d come.

I walked straight into the restaurant where a few minutes ago a dignified lady with a penchant for diamonds had eaten mussels in cream, up to the table where Janus sat and exclaimed, “Monsieur Petrain! Morgan is dead!”

Janus, a woman’s thigh pressed to his own, looked up, confusion battling with irritation, before the professionalism of a ghost kicked in. “Morgan? How terrible!”

Ghosts lie. It’s how we keep our friends.

“They sent me to find you at once!”

“Well yes,” he murmured, thumb flicking against the edge of a fifty-euro bill. “I can see that they would.”

“Morgan?” asked the woman draped across his left leg. “Who is Morgan?”

“My good friend Morgan,” he replied quickly, easily. “How did it happen?” he added, eyes flicking to me as his thumb snapped back and forth against the note.

“His lungs,” I replied. “The doctors always said that Michael Morgan would never live past fifty. Can you come?”

And finally, in not his finest hour of deductive reasoning, Janus understood.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Let me settle up and I’ll be right with you.”

Three minutes later we walked beneath the red awnings and flaking shutters of the tight Paris streets and Janus said, “Who are you?”

“How many ghosts did you introduce to Morgan?”

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“We need to get somewhere crowded. Need to jump away.”

“Why? I’ve only just moved to —”

“You’re being followed. An organisation called Aquarius is right behind you. They tracked you from Madame Osako through the cleaner to Petrain, and so did I. I bought us a few minutes, that’s all.”

A curl at the corner of his mouth. “Why would you do this?”

“They killed Hecuba, Kuanyin, others. They call me Kepler. Their file on you is thick; their file on me is a lie, and their file on Galileo is a fake.”

“Who’s Galileo?”

“Miami. Galileo killed us. Come on, we need a crowd.”

Remember Miami.

November 2001.

At this time the Galileo file had her down as a beautiful woman with auburn hair who didn’t need to wear heels to strut, lipstick to pout. Who she was, where she was, I do not know, but she was entirely herself, some other where.

It was unseasonably cold for the time of year. I had gone so far as to start carrying a light linen jacket to wear outside, and on the beach the sunbathers were almost cool enough to talk to each other, instead of the usual silent all-consuming sweat that defined the Florida sands.

I was Carla Hermandez, district attorney, and I had become myself for the sake of my flat. On the fourteenth floor of a Miami tower block, I had panoramic views of the entire city, the green explosion of Oleta to my right, the beach not fifteen minutes’ walk away, and in my black marble bathroom a jacuzzi. All paid for by the criminal cartels I was meant to prosecute.

My sudden donation of a large percentage of my life savings to victim-support charities had therefore earned me the incredulity of my (dubious and sacked) accountant, and simultaneously a range of dinner invitations from people hoping to profit by my new-found philanthropy. Money buys friendship in even the most well-intentioned circles.

I eased into my body and lifestyle a little piece at a time: a friend dropped here, a phone disconnected there, a drink with a stranger in a bar, a jog along the beach, a gift to the concierge downstairs.

I was beginning to settle in when a voice said:

“I just
love
who you’re wearing.”

It was a fund-raiser for an anti-corruption charity. I had attended for the nibbles, the jazz and the irony. But there, resplendent in a blue taffeta dress, was Janus.

She had to be Janus.

No one else would have polished their teeth to such whiteness.

No one else would dare wear such long lacquered nails, such a low-cut dress, such high heels for such dainty legs.

No one else could have recognised that I, Carla Hermandez, was not myself.

“Darling,” she exclaimed, looping one arm through mine, “I’ve been in Miami for nine months, and Carla Hermandez is a double-crossing bitch. A queen among bitches, a bitch that laughs the laugh and barks the bark, but still a bitch. And you –” she tapped my shoulder with her glass “– are clearly
not
Carla Hermandez. How are you, darling? How are you keeping?”

“Well,” I replied, “Miss…?”

“I am Ambrosia Jane. And if I ever meet them, I shall chide my parents for the name.”

“What happened to Michael? Michael Morgan?”

A flicker passed across Janus’ face, and softer than I’d ever heard her speak before she murmured, “Time to move on.” Then her face flashed a smile again, too bright to be real. “I hear you’ve quit the business?”

“You mean district attorney?”

“I mean estate agenting. Such a shame; you were so good at it.”

“Time to move on.”

She laughed, brittle and false as cut glass. “I hope you’re keeping busy in your retirement.”

“I’m… Yes. Keeping busy. Trying a few different things.”

A flicker of concern across her high plucked brow. “Are you all right, sweet thing?” she murmured. “Have you… had a bad experience?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“I’m fine too.”

“Well then. There you are.”

Silence, her eyes fixed on mine. I looked away. Her arm tightened against the crook of my elbow. Two women pressed together in a room of strangers, and stranger than could be known. “You know,” she murmured, “for the last thirty years I’ve been looking after my body. I exercised, ate carefully, played golf –
golf
of all things. Walking away from all that work I put in was… frustrating. But at least now I don’t have to care about my figure. More champagne?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said.

Stand on a balcony overlooking Miami.

Cars back to back, pairs of white lights in one direction, red in the other, glowing like angry ants stuck in a queue to the nest.

Look down.

Pick a body.

Any body.

As an estate agent, I picked my bodies carefully. The beautiful, the wealthy, the popular, the beloved. I picked apart their lives and made their lives my own.

More care, less artifice.

Look through the walls, and I can see seven million lives acted out as though their stories, their memories, were the defining point of the universe.

Which, in a way, they are.

I stand on a terrace fifteen floors up, at a party hosted by a charity whose name I can’t remember but which is terribly, terribly grateful to me for turning over most of my savings to its account, and Miami isn’t cold, not even in November; the most chilly Miami gets is when you step inside the foyers of arctic air conditioning,

but I shiver.

Then Janus is by my side. She is very beautiful, and she is young, and ancient, and careless, and free.

“More champagne?” she says.

I do not say no.

Some hours later, as the rising sun pushed shadows across my bedroom ceiling, Janus rolled over beside me and said, “Cancer.”

“What?”

“I – Morgan, I, myself – developed lung cancer.”

“I’m… sorry to hear that.”

“It’s a slow tumour – large but slow. It hasn’t spread – hadn’t spread. Left lung. I had excellent medical insurance. I think he’ll live.”

“You had a family.”

I could have made it a question, but there was no point. The answer was easy, obvious, known.

“A wife, two children. Elsa, Amber. They’re both grown up now. I was in a hurry. We’re always in such a hurry, you and I. The treatment was chemotherapy, radiotherapy, drugs, and eventually a lung transplant. I did the radiotherapy and it was… fine. My wife, Paula, came with me on every trip. She was very brave. She carried on as if nothing was happening, which is what you need when you have… this thing. But when the hospital called, she was there by my side. Then my hair began to fall out, I was sick, cramps in my stomach, legs. My gums bled, my eyes ached, I was hot and dizzy and it wouldn’t go away. Pain I have experienced… Would you believe I used to go to the dentist when I was Morgan? But nausea. Trapped sweating in a dying corpse, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to make it stop, your own body trying to poison you from the inside out. It was… And Paula held my hand and… I didn’t mean to, it happened so fast. I was Morgan, and then he was lying on the bed beside me, his eyebrows falling out, and he was shouting, screaming, who are you, who are you, what’s happening, so loud that Elsa came running too. She’d come for dad. To help me get through this, and I was so… I didn’t mean to jump. I blew it. When Elsa came through the door and saw me – saw Morgan – and he didn’t recognise her, didn’t know her face. It was over. Just one second, just a moment, a tiny moment and…” She stopped, turned her face away from me. I waited. “My wife. Paula. She lied to me. She had arthritis, her hands had seized up, painful. She’d said that they were fine, not to worry, here – have another pillow. But I went into her and my fingers were… to even bend them hurt up to my elbows, hurt into my jaw, relentless. She’d lied to me as she brought me food and held me in the dark. My wife lied.”

Janus was crying, silently, her back shaking, head buried.

I held her, tight and without a word, having nothing better to give.

And then the sun was up, and I said, “I’ve quit estate agenting.”

She sat in the window, eating toast and honey, and I said,

“There was an affair in Edinburgh. A deal that went bad. A ghost who… I thought I knew. You hear rumours but you never know for certain until it happens to you. I sold her out. Gave her account information to some people.”

“What people?”

“The kind of people who kill ghosts.”

“Why?”

I thought about it then shrugged. “I didn’t think she deserved to live.”

Janus laughed.

Twelve hours later Janus was gone, and Ambrosia Jane was in the emergency room. The doctors inspected her for concussion, substance abuse, psychotic breakdown; prodded for the four months of lost time she had experienced between getting on a bus in Tampa and waking up in South Beach with silk on her shoulders.

A week later a letter addressed to Carla Hermandez arrived at my apartment. It smelt of lavender and was signed, “Your fellow traveller and friend”.

It contained an invitation to the
Fairview Royale
, a barge specialising in loud music and cheap wine: Please come if you can. There’ll be fireworks.

You hear rumours.

A frigate in 1899 off the coast of Hong Kong. A cruiser in 1924, ferry in 1957.

Milli Vra
,
Alexandra
,
Santa Rosa
.

You never believe it’ll happen to you.

In the same way that a beautiful man in a Parisian café perhaps does not look for the men in Lycra who have come to end him. They’ve been there all along. You simply did not think they could be there for you.

I went to the Port of Miami, to have drinks on the
Fairview Royale
.

As the ship pulled away from the harbour I looked for Janus, and she found me.

She was wearing a young black woman with warm round cheeks and a shaven head.

She said, “Carla?” and there was a note of surprise in her voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I received an invite. I thought it was from you.”

“I didn’t send anything.”

This is that moment. It is the second of realisation when the terror bites. It is the instant when paranoia raises its head and whispers,
Fear me
.
I was right all along.
You go forward, you go back; the choosing is all.

“We need to get off this ship,” I breathed.

“Carla…”

“We
need
to get off this ship.”

Janus didn’t argue.

I am

partygoer, packet of pills in my pocket, vodka on my breath,

waiter, blisters on my feet, trousers too tight at the groin.

I am sailor in childish white uniform who knocks on the door of the cabin and says, sir? A message, sir?

I am the captain of the ship, and I am taking the boat towards land as fast as I possibly can.

Janus is my first mate, arms folded, eyes fixed on the partying throng below.

“It’s not a bomb,” she –
he
, a young man in white buttoned socks – says at last. “If it was a bomb we’d be dead now.”

“Maybe they’re limiting casualties.”

“They?”

“They. Whoever they are this time.”

His eyes flicker to me, then back to the dancing below. “You’ve done this before,” he murmurs.

“A couple of times.”

“It might not be a trap.”

“You believe that?”

“No.”

I take us towards a concrete wharf, flattened sheds of an industrial quay, the swollen sides of container ships riding high in the water, silent monoliths overhead.

“When we arrive,” I breathe, “don’t stop, just run.”

“Don’t need to tell me, sweetheart.”

I flinch. A first mate doesn’t say “sweetheart” to his captain.

It’s wrong, the wrong words from the wrong mouth, it is ugly.

In another time, another place, I would say something.

Not tonight.

Slow as an ox, stately as a fattened cow, I ease us in.

Janus didn’t bother with the rope, waited for the ship to slow to walking pace and jumped. I killed the engines and, as we bounced against the quay, I too hopped overboard, landing awkwardly on crooked ankles, steadying myself and pushing up, heading towards land.

Janus was already running for the metal fence that ringed the quay, while behind us, someone, a confused waiter, seeing his captain and first mate depart, shouted, “Hey!”

I kept running, unsure where I was, heading for the bright lights of the city, a silent causeway between us and it, cranes overhead, yellow beasts for hauling containers the size of houses, cars parked on the other side of the fence, low buildings with ominous messages such as
CUSTOMS
&
IMMIGRATION
–
OBEY
ALL
COMMANDS
nailed to the door. Janus was ahead, running between great walls of crates, through the sodium-stained night towards the metal gate and the bright road beyond, and it occurred to me that no one might have spotted us, safe in our skins, until the moment when we ran.

“Janus!” I called as his footsteps slapped in the night. “Janus!”

Janus, the gate a few metres away, half-turned to look back at me and fell.

There was the sound of an angry wasp biting a distracted bear, and Janus was on the ground, legs crooked beneath him. For a moment I couldn’t see the blood, but as I pressed my back against the crate wall and stared at the body lying not ten feet from my knocking knees, it began to spread. Fast at first, then somehow slower as the area it covered grew wider, the blood came from his back, from the hole the bullet had torn through his lung, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that ghosts are predictable. Mark your target, take them out. Whoever was shooting at us knew our natures.

I looked and saw only dark tunnels of towering crates, a chain fence and a padlocked gate. Janus lay just out in the open, head rolled towards me, mouth working, blood and foam on his lips, trying to speak. I eased closer, back still pressed against the containers, until I was a foot and a half from him.

“Ca… ca… ca…”

The beginning of a sound that might have been a name.

Janus’ left hand was outstretched to me, right hand limp as his life ran away, the breath bubbling up through the shattered remnants of his ribcage. I could almost reach his hand without exposing myself, grab it from cover. The blood trickled against the toe of my shoe.